


A right to some comfort

by still_intrepid



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Also references Lithuania/Poland, Coercion, Disordered Eating, F/F, Gender Issues, Implied coerced sex, Misunderstandings, Reunions, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 22:14:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15738375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_intrepid/pseuds/still_intrepid
Summary: It wasn’t that bad, Lithuania told herself, as the weeks and the months went by in Russia’s house.Set generally in the time of the partitions/1800s.





	A right to some comfort

**Author's Note:**

> There are a _lot_ more notes at the end, but suffice to say for now that this is the heaviest thing I've written in a while certainly for these characters. I went back and forth on whether to use the big archive warning or just choose not to, but to be on the safe side. 
> 
> posted [here](http://nyolietpol.co.vu/post/177182396130/a-right-to-some-comfort-stillintrepid) on tumblr.

_Lithuania slips out of bed a little after dawn, navigating the pattern of floorboards beneath the carpet with practised ease._

_She’s almost made it to the door when she hears the bedclothes rustling behind her._

_“Lithuania…?” Russia murmurs._

_She stops._

_“I didn’t realise you were awake.  I was just going to—”_

_Despite the menial nature of the tasks, setting the hearth fires, breaking the ice on the water troughs outside, Lithuania rather treasures her quiet morning time alone before the rest of the house rises._

_“You’re such a willing Cendrillon…” Russia teases, voice husky and sweet. “Other people can do all that.”_

_“That doesn’t seem fair.  I feel like I’m shirking my duties.”_

_But she’s already walking back towards the bed._

_“Just a little longer,” Russia pleads, “just a little.”_

\--

When she was first placed in Russia’s house, Lithuania was affronted to find that Russia intended to have her as some sort of personal maidservant. But she was _baffled_ when, having presented herself at Russia’s bedroom door that first morning, it seemed Russia in fact wanted to comb and braid _her_ hair, rather than the other way about.

“You have such lovely hair,” Russia said, hesitant and rather apologetic, half turned away from Lithuania as they both sat on the bed.  “I—I never had a sister, so…”

Which was all rather pathetic, Lithuania thought, but then she snuck a glance at that still-childlike face and realised, as she had at their first meeting, how lonely Russia must be. 

She sighed, and started loosing her thick dark hair from the braid she already had it in. 

“Well, alright, just this once.”

Lithuania had never much liked other people touching her hair—and she had no conception of the girlish hair-braiding childhood Russia seemed to imagine—but it wasn't that bad. 

Russia was probably, in her usual odd way, just trying to be friendly. As if this was an appropriate situation for friendliness!   _You conquered me._

They didn’t speak much.  Russia’s hands shook the whole time. 

“There,” Russia said, releasing her, then, seeing her expression: “I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy.”

“No, no,” Lithuania said, patting one side of her head experimentally, “that’s not bad.”

Russia still looked flustered, but a little pleased now too.  “Long hair is so beautiful.  _You’re_ beautiful, Lithuania.”  

Lithuania’s mouth dropped open. 

“That was too much,” Russia said hastily.  “But you see I’ve liked you for so long and now I have you here I hardly know what to do with myself!  But please, I’ll get better with practise—you’ll let me braid your hair again, won’t you?”

_So much for just this once._

“Of—of course, Russia.” 

She drew the line at Russia dressing and undressing her.   Somehow even then she knew to do it smilingly, like it was a joke they shared.  Affecting a coy wink, she said, “I don’t think we know each other that well yet, do we?”

\-- 

It wasn’t that bad, she told herself, as the weeks and months went by.  Russia always noticed if she redid the braiding herself during the day, so she went about with the feeling of the odd uneven tugs of a too-loose or too-tight strand like a ghost of fingers in her hair all day.  It wasn’t that bad. 

She wondered if there was a way to cut off her own hair and make it look like an accident.

\--

She was _trying_ , alright?  She was fucking trying: that’s what she said to herself over and over in those early furious days.

Hands sweating and heart thumping, Russia kissed her and she caught herself thinking idiotic thoughts. She told herself: _no! stop fucking dramatizing yourself!  Stop making out that you’re some victim, some helpless girl.  People_ enjoy _kissing after all, I think you’re just not_ trying _, Lithuania._

From the torrent of words of that alien voice in her head, one idea filtered through clear: _don’t be helpless_.

She grabbed onto Russia’s collar and kissed back fiercely, biting at her lip, and Russia groaned with some strong emotion and pressed their bodies together.

\--  
  
Cold cold cold afterwards, all she can think is _: I've made a tactical error. I have ceded ground that will now never need to be reconquered. It will always be assumed._

She wants to run she wants to _run_ she wants to run for miles and miles and miles but she can't go anywhere and she can't get rid of the phantom tingle of lips on her neck, fingerprints which must stand out like scorch marks all over her skin. Not until she scrambles under her mattress for a pocket knife and scores a neat line in bloody pock-marks across her thigh.  She breathes out as last at _last_  all the feeling in her body regroups to that sweet sting. 

\--

She sits in a room with Estonia and Latvia opposite—Latvia who will freeze over and hardly speak to her for days.  _I thought we were going to spend time together but you spend the whole time with Russia and just ignore me!_

At the opera, in a room full of people, territory once ceded lost forever.  She tries to laughingly shrug off the arm about her shoulders but it becomes hard and unyielding and Russia’s radiant expression is dashed into stormy betrayal.  Russia was always so easily hurt, and they are in public.   

Russia has an arm around her, fingers moving, tracing circles on the bone of her shoulders, ever closer but never quite reaching the exposed skin above the collar.   Russia slips an arm down her side, around her waist. She is pathetically grateful for her thick riding jacket.  She is hardly able to breathe through the scent.  The back of her neck prickling, the pit of her stomach sick, she’s nursing a glass, champagne on an empty stomach _anything_ to keep her hands occupied and out of Russia’s soft grasping hands.

She wonders if there’s a way to cut off her own breasts and make it look like an accident.

\--

“I love you,” Russia whispers at last when they’re alone.

Lithuania is too fatally tired that day to respond fast enough. 

Russia untangles their limbs and gets up, eyes brim full of confusion and hurt. 

“Russia, wait.”

But Russia strides from the room.

Lithuania indulges in her nausea for a moment, grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut, starves herself of oxygen and screams silently for ten seconds.  And then follows her.  
  
It's worse not to follow. _I don't like people who leave me alone when I'm upset,_ Russia says _, people who are supposed to be my friends._

In the kitchen, Russia has her back to her. 

“Russia.  Did I do something wrong?”

Russia takes a gulp of water from a glass and lets out a short _ha_ of laughter.  “Forget about it.”  

Lithuania bites her lip.  “Look.  I think we've misunderstood each other, I think you— I think I—”

“You think I'm ugly, don't you?” Russia gurgles.  “You hate me.  Just a big hulking thing, not... Is that it?”

“Russia, no! I don't think that at all, that's not the point—!”

“ _Then what is?_ ” The glass Russia was holding smashes against the opposite wall and Lithuania shrieks and puts her hands over her ears. Russia turns around, stricken. “Lithuania. I love you so much, and it hurts me so that you can't love me even a little.”

“Oh. No, don't. Don’t feel like that, I'm sorry I...” 

She doesn’t know what else to say.  So she walks forwards and hesitantly, wordlessly, puts her arms around Russia, who resists for a few seconds and then melts into her embrace, weeping. 

\--

“Please,” Russia whispers, “please just, just let me.  Just a little.  We’re the same after all, aren’t we?  I knew it when we first met.  I knew you were a princess.  I knew… Why can’t you see it Lithuania, why can’t you see me?  Just let me, just let me make you feel beautiful.”

Russia is so nervous, flushed, body shaking all over. 

Lithuania tries not to even register how she herself is feeling.

Why should it matter, this body isn’t me.  Nothing’s real anyway. 

\--

Paris isn’t real and it’s exactly what she needs. Napoleon’s so-called Duchy of Warsaw certainly was never going to be real, and she tells herself she always knew that, and didn’t care anyway. She presents herself to France and doesn’t expect too much. 

And France is the perfect host, charming and generous, and doesn’t stop her from picking foolish fights or wearing her chest bindings to bed. (She wakes up sometimes and thinks she might be dying but after a moment the dizziness fizzes in her lungs and in her head like pride, like the ache in her stomach like the stings on her calves thighs ankles, even now even now in escape.) France takes her to her own tailor and has her choose new clothes, reads out early drafts of her writings and encourages Lithuania to be brutal, drags her to parties and salons where no one minds if she just sits and listens. 

She says all the right things: extravagant gilded compliments you can laugh at, calls her _splendide_ , _magnifique_ , _l’etoile la plus brillante,_ the brightest star. Neither _belle_ nor _beau_ , never.

Lithuania supposes France has had a practise run for how to talk to people like them because, of course, she’d had Poland staying with her. 

And speaking of Poland.

**\--**

Poland’s face is far too full to read at a glance. She looks otherwise a perfect street urchin; it's a wonder France allowed her the house, let alone the bedroom. 

Her expression clears and she grins, eying Lithuania's starched uniform. 

“Aren’t you a little short for a national guardsman?" she says. It stings like a slap.  "I feel like you should be glaring haughtily at me from behind an artillery piece, _kaboom_!” Poland tugs her cap between her hands, again just like some improbably adorable gamin. “I'm talking nonsense.  What I wanted to say—look underneath this, all this, Liet I'm still the same, when it comes to how I feel about you and I wondered... I _needed_ to know… how you were.”

“The same,” Lithuania says fervently, her head and heart singing, emotion forcing the lie out clear and bright as truth, “the same about you, always, oh _Poland_ —”

“Liet?”

Lithuania stops. Her hands are loosely gripping the front of Poland’s shirt. Poland looks up at her, uncertain.

“Under these clothes,” Lithuania prompts. Yes. This is what she needs. And it doesn’t matter about France, she knows France and Poland were fucking too, probably, and…

And Poland’s face is like sunshine. “Oh. Oh. That? I mean… _yes_. I mean _yes_ , alright, I’ll take off this ugly thing,” she wriggles out of coat and waistcoat and starts on the shirt, “and you can get out of this… totally swanky actually… uniform…”

Lithuania unbuttons her jacket and then, determinedly, her blouse.

Because she’s watching Poland’s face for it, she sees the instant of shock.

“Don’t tell me I shouldn’t,” she snaps, “we’ve all done it.”

“I—I wasn’t going to,” Poland says, completely unconvincingly Lithuania thinks. “I was just going to say... you don't have to. You look, I mean in that uniform you’d look fine. Liet… that looks... really _tight_.”

“I do have to.  I have to. I don't expect you to understand, but it's my body, alright? Not yours!”

“I…” Poland is stunned into silence for a second. “I never said—hey you know that I’ll always… this doesn’t change anything, I only…” Her eyes narrow. “What has Russia been saying to you?”

And just like that, Lithuania suddenly can't stand another moment of Poland's stagey pity, fake as hell. “Oh, that’s typical,” she spits. “Of course you'd think it would have to be Russia!! I couldn't possibly decide anything on my own, could I? This is nothing to do with her!”

Poland just stares again, half out of her shirt, jaw slack, like a reveller at the tail end of one of France’s parties. Then, “Fine!” she yells, red in the face. “Fine! I can see when I’m not wanted. I’ll not detain you further!!”

She throws on the rest of her clothes and tucks her hair into her cap, hoists her carbine over shoulder and marches off to get shot at over a stupid pointless barricade or whatever. 

\--

Of course Lithuania has to go back. 

 _It was politics_ , she tells Russia; _no, I don't hate you, but you have to understand I would take any chance at independence._

She's in purgatory in Russia’s bad graces for a while but eventually she is forgiven. 

 _I understand,_ Russia says, _and you know if it was up to me—you'd be a princess, not a maid, you know that's only a formality, I keep telling you: we're equal, we're the same_ _._

—

Russia unwraps her like a birthday gift and dresses her up like a doll. Laments over her chest, _Oh Lithuania, what have you done to yourself—that perverted France creature!_ (Smothered in frills and skirts and corsetry, half the time Lithuania can’t recognise herself in the mirror.)

“But you look so nice in pretty dresses! You should wear them more often,” (And so, therefore, she shall.) “ _I_ would, if I had your figure. You’re so lucky,” Russia says, and pinches her viciously, absently. (Lithuania doesn’t react. The bruise will come up later.)

“Beauty comes so easy to you,” Russia murmurs as Lithuania is divested again piece by piece before bed. “All this—just handed to you but it's like you hardly even appreciate it.”

 _You’re so beautiful, Lithuania_. So soft, so kind, so understanding, so yielding, so willing an echo, so beautiful.

\--

Lithuania stops eating again.  She drops food in her apron pocket, hides it at the back of her closet and lets it decay. 

She knows she knows she's being absurd but she tells herself _I don't need food._

_I don't need fat, I don't need softness. I never wanted to be a girl. I wish I was a knife._

She knows, on some level. 

But if Russia can deny reality then so can she. 

\--

_That morning, she almost made it to the door._

_“Such a willing Cendrillon,” Russia teases. “Other people can do all that.”_

_“That doesn’t seem fair. I feel like I’m shirking my duties.”_

_But she’s already walking back towards the bed._

_“Just a little longer,” Russia pleads, “just a little.”_

_"Y-yeah, I am tired," she says, and closes her eyes tight as Russia sits up on an elbow and drags down at the neckline of her night-shirt_. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> so the theme song to this fic would be _[Float](https://miriamjones.bandcamp.com/track/float)_ by Miriam Jones (where the title comes from, do check it out it’s a GREAT catchy disturbing song!)
> 
> I was going to have one more scene where someone else confronted Lithuania and told her pragmatically to stop _encouraging_ Russia’s behaviour if she didn’t like it;;;;
> 
> Also, I hope, I really hope, that sometime after the events of all this she can and she does start talking back and fighting back, and I believe she did, but I also… if someone takes issue with Russia’s characteriation a priori _or_ says that this is tiresome because _Lithuania’s just being a doormat_ or whatever, both those are going to be difficult places to start a discussion from.
> 
> Re: Russia. Well. Like I say, _Float_. Both for her here and for his characterisation in the comic itself (I characterise the nyotalia version if not _identical_ then with some very strong same central character points). I am not saying he’s irredeemably evil or anything. I’m saying he’s… “ _not as self-aware as he might be”,_ for one thing. All that fascination with and love for Lithuania, that’s not faked, nor is the confusion or the shakiness or the emotion. But that doesn’t make it okay to act like this. Russia _is_ sad and lonely! Russia has had an awful awful life! Lithuania’s “love” could, sure why not, be the only thing within reach that can “save” Russia. _That does not entitle Russia to that love or anything else._ Also, Russia can be kind and funny and sweet and good – even the Russia here to the Lithuania here. In the end I couldn’t put everything into one story though _and_ , tbh, in this sort of situation… the good aspects, exist though they may, kind of pale in comparison.
> 
> Other fics kind of in this area, though no nyotalia, _[Mine Acquaintance Into Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/41626)_ and of course (set later) _[Lithuania 1940](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5352659/1/1940-Lithuania)_ , though both ascribe more cunning to Russia than is here maybe. 
> 
> Hhh what to say. It’s the darkest bleakest thing I’ve written in a good while, if not ever. Definitely for my nyo!lietpol and associated. Though it’s picking up a bunch of the themes, e.g. the gender stuff, that I’ve been working on since forever (well… 2014 or so.) It’s been brewing for a while maybe but I wrote it quick over these last days. I’d obviously love comments if you have them <3
> 
> I should probably also add a note that I’m not interested in getting into ship wars! This is a fic about a horrible horrible relationship. That doesn’t mean I automatically hate works portraying the characters in a happy one, _far less_ the people who create them.
> 
> Cendrillon is the original French Cinderella – thought of using a Russian tale, but Vasilisa for e.g. isn’t actually the same focus really.  
> Tumblr post is [here](http://nyolietpol.co.vu/post/177182396130/a-right-to-some-comfort-stillintrepid)!


End file.
